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So I have been working on a campaign, but I have found myself a bit stuck. I have the story outlined, and a clear picture of what I want to accomplish with the campaign. So after years of playing I am getting tired of the players encounter x amount of monsters and have to kill them to get to the next part pattern which a lot of adventures seem to have. I wish to make the campaign more of a survival against the environment, as well as avoiding encounters with superior opponents.
I really want to make the adventure feel more like an action-adventure game. Focusing more on skill challenges. The thing is, I do not have experience with designing such an adventure, and do not know of any good examples or resources that would help me either.
So I am asking if anyone knows of adventures, or resources which would help me.
Eh...Pathfinder isn't really set up to be that kind of campaign. You can pull it off, up to maybe level 6, but after that it's not going to happen. Heck, at first level you have clerics with create water, purify food and drink, druids can know the direction, and the survival skill for anyone else will pretty much prevent any and all problems of basic "woodland survival".
You could make this sort of thing happen, but it would require a lot of work, and probably no casters. What does it matter if you're trapped in a desert if the cleric can just create an endless amount of water, or if you're lost in the woods and the druid can cast Know Direction.
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Idk. I'm currently in a game where we spent 16 days in the actual wilderness with nothing but what we were as a class to help us out. Everything, even tools and clothing was fashioned and crafted from raw materials we had to find, make, and use. We were naked, tired, hungry, and confused, and after jumping through a crystal clear lake, ended up in a forest.
Survival skill is good to have for not getting lost, since you know where true north lies. You don't remember though, where the party camp is. Weather, terrain, normal animals will be your issues for your pcs. Do they go after the deer and dire deer to get hide for clothing?mor do they try to go to the nearest town, with what they have, and hope for the best? Had issues with a mother panther, owl bear, boars and dire boars, deer and dire deer, so forth. My archer had to make his bow from scratch, that's fine. But to took him days to do so, and he had to go put and catch/kill birds for the feathers for his arrows.
If you can micromanage or minimize the overall impact certain aspects of the game, all the better, at least for a start. (examples: carrying capacity,strength scores to pull/break/cut trees for shelter, fire wood, and weapons; encumbrance, weather effects, terrain issues, ammunition tally, so on). These little things of checked implemented, will have a greater impact on the party, and make them more survival like.
Force them to use swim, know: nature, climb, stealth checks. Survival is for living in the wilderness and surviving it in general. It takes know:nature to know that these berries your party wants to eat are poisonous, but not those berries over there.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Grizzly, yes that helps quite a bit.
It's going to be a heavy jungle setting with overgrown ruins thrown in, as well as dangerous savages, etc. I am not going to exclude fights, but I want to minimize their importance, while still trying to make the game fun.
I know how casters can make things a lot less challenging. I probably will not have to worry about druids, because of the intro I am going for, which the party is well a military scout team, so well druids are kind of excluded right there. Clerics would still be a useful class, but I am not that much of a sadist where I want to be challenging them constantly with poisoned food, and unhealthy drink.
I know that section will be the party fleeing through the jungle from a superior force that is tracking them. Being that this force knows the terrain gives them a major advantage to tracking the party too.
One of the first things that PF characters gain as they level up is the ability to more or less ignore the elements. This is especially true of casters. If this is the sort of campaign you want to run, one druid or ranger could spoil your fun.
Do a number of things with skill check -- Swim, Climb, or Acrobatics to get across the stream, for instance (not a problem after flight and teleport become available, but it may make them blow a few spells, or have real difficulties if they don't have them available.)
Play out at least some of the food-gathering Survival checks as combats. (Fight this deer -- snake -- tapir -- elephant -- crocodile). Stuff like that.
Periodic Fortitude saves against fatigue, disease, and the like.
But, yeah, at higher levels this isn't going to work against certain spells.
The underlying thing you want to emphasize in your campaign is goals. In a typical high-fantasy campaign (I'm currently running one) the PCs have civilization at hand, can go off on adventures, and generally kick back w/some downtime so they can work on themselves. Their goals then are either esoteric ("I want to start a guild") or center on their own advancement ("I want enough loot to buy myself a decent magic axe")
In a survival type campaign, your players should have firm goals: building a wall for their camp, making fire, fashioning a stretcher. They should also always be working, doing, making or watching. Constant checks for either dangers or resources will be their norm.
You'd be amazed how much there is out there that could kill you. As everyone upthread has already mentioned; by level 6 this is all pretty much moot, but til then you've got to keep them motivated with these goals.
Their "missions" or adventures then will likely be around the accomplishing of these goals. I could imagine one of their side quests at level 1 being a "5 room dungeon" style game where they need to find berries to eat:
Room 1: The Trail/CR 1
You found a narrow game trail near your camp. Scat along the edge of the trail indicates whatever passed this way was eating Gojo Berries; a delicacy with a lot of flavor this time of year. Roll Knowledge skills, Survival and such to begin your search for the lovely treat; success gets you down the right path while failure indicates you've stumbled through poison oak getting there and need to make Fort saves (DC 12 or Fatigued).
Room 2: The Wide Stream/CR 2
The path makes it's way to the banks of a cold and swift-flowing stream roughly 40' across. You are on the upper bank while the lower bank is a 10' drop below on the far side. At this edge of the river are Gojo bushes but they've all been picked clean. You can clearly see however a foraging boar on the far bank; its face is stained blue from fresh Gojo juice.
Directly overhead are a clump of cloying cypress trees; their gnarled frames stoop and squat over much of the river as their bulging roots cling to the steep earthen bank. Further upriver are a few standing stones, just barely breaking the surface of the water. The spray of the flow smashes off of them creating a fine mist in the air here.
PCs must find a way across, or else go hungry. The river requires hard swim checks (DC 17) but its not impossible for them to cross that way. This will however also chill them to the point where they'll need to make a DC 15 Fort save or suffer 1d6 non-lethal. They might also use the trees, making Climb and Acrobatics checks to get close enough to jump down (DC 15 Climb, then a DC 15 Acrobatics) and take 1d6 non-lethal damage from the controlled fall or finally make 3 consecutive DC 15 Acrobatics checks to use the stepping stones - success w/all three means NO non-lethal damage. They may invent other ways across here
Room 3: Nearly There/CR 1
The boar is long gone by the time you arrive on the far shore. It has however left a nice fresh trail for you. You make your way no less than a few feet when you hear a squeal up ahead.
Monster: Giant Spider - instead of a web spinner, this giant spider is a trapdoor variety, waiting to use a Grab maneuver from an underground pit on the side of the trail. Once it successfully Grabs an opponent it drags them into it's lair to finish the job. The PCs will have to kill it to get their friend back.
Room 4: Boar Festival/CR 2
Leaving the spider behind you spy up ahead more denuded Gojo bushes. However in the distance there's a rustling and through the brush you can easily see a glen with a cluster of the bushes, full of berries, around a small pool. Forcing your way through the brush you are surprised to see a Small shape doing the same from the far side of the forest.
Monsters: a boar moves into the area which is only a 30' radius with a shallow pool and 2 squares filled with the bushes. The tiny glen is fairly overgrown so it is Rough Terrain. The creature will defend its meal to the death.
Room 5: Take Your Rewards
- the boar and the berries are a good food source
- the boar's hide can be taken for clothes/goods; its other bones/tusks can be tools
- the Gojo bushes can be smoldered over coals to produce an incense that wards off vermin
Depending on the level you want to run you have some options. The classic survival in the wilderness is going to be difficult to pull off except at low levels. If you want to challenge higher level characters you need to change things around. For a mid-level group deep underground may work. As long as they cannot just pop back to civilization to rest and regain supplies this will still be challenging. Once you have people able to teleport or use other types of fast movement to traverse the distance it gets harder. You almost have to have some reason these types of travel do not work. Maybe there is something in the environment that cuts off where they are adventuring from the rest of the world. Imposing a time limit can also help. The classic race against time limit is a classic plot device for a reason.
At high levels you can use other planes as a way to keep the campaign going. Use demi planes with strange planar constraints. Another good way is to have a series of connected gates where the only way through is to follow a specific route.
Another thing you can do is to have plot reasons they cannot just fight their way through everything. Maybe they need to recover an item and if the villain notices them he will simply move it. Another reason to avoid combat could be that there are just too many opponents. This works well for adventures on other planes. Maybe they need to retrieve something from the fortress of a Demon Lord in the Abyss. If they try and just fight through they will have to face an entire plane of demons.
This is an amazing thread. I agree that P6 would be the way to go, but good lord this sounds fun!
Nonlinear exploration and survivial games are all about making descisions. For a descision to have any meaning, the players need to know what things their options would likely lead to. Chosing between A, B, and C when you have no way to determine what the difference between those option is, is not really a choice, just a random pick.
For my own campaign, I created this system using the Hex-Exploration rules from Ultimate Campaign:
The party can chose to travel on highways, on smaller tracks, or cross country. Highways and tracks may not be available everywhere.
On a highway, the PCs will cover the distance in the fastest way, but there is a higher chance to have a random encounter. When going cross country, the chance for a random encounter is lowest, but they will also take longer to reach their destination. The chance for an encounters on highways is 40%, on tracks 20%, and cross country 10% per time unit in which you roll for random encounters. (Taken the movement rates below, this comes out as 40x3=120, 20x4=80, 10x6=60. You'll have twice the chance for encounters when covering a distance by highway than cross-country.)
Characters movement speed is given in Movement Points per day (8 hours of marching): 15 ft. = 3 points; 20 ft. = 4 points; 30 ft. = 6 points; 40 ft. 8 points; or simply one point per 5 ft. of movement speed.
Crossing a hex takes the following number of Movement Points.
Terrain - MP
Highway - 3
Trail (forest, marsh, plains) - 3
Highway (mountains) - 4
Trail (jungle, hills, mountains) - 4
Trackless (plains) - 4
Trackless - 6
Trackless (jungle) - 12
You make a number of different encounter tables, one for each type of common environment in the campaign. For example: Plains, forest, marsh, jungle, hills, mountains, arctic, and ocean.
The items on the encounter tables are not just creatures. I think a good mix is 32% monsters, 24% natural features, 16% humanoids, 8% artificial constructions, and 20% "special".
"Monsters" are just regular animals and other beasts common to the environment.
"Natural Features" are rivers, chasm, cliff faces, or a wildfire, sandstorm, and other hazards. Some must be endured, others the party might go around at the cost of additional travel time.
"Humanoids" are bandits, soldiers, goblins, orcs, ogres, and so on. If they are hostile or not is left to the GM.
"Artificial Constructions" are mostly small ruins, but might also be isolated farms, guardposts, and so on.
"Special" is left open for a secondary encounter list that is specific to the current campaign. If the characters are traveling through the Spider Forest, it would be additional spider encounters. If the characters are currently in a war it would be encounters with enemy soldiers, allied patrols, or refugees. Even when having random encounters, the players should not feel that this travel section does not have something to do with the story of the campaign.
Also remember encounter distances. Unless it's a group of humanoid lying in ambush, they don't expect to meet the PCs either.
Terrain - Encounter Distance
Forest - 2d8 × 10 feet
Hills - 2d10 × 10 feet
Jungle - 2d6 × 10 feet
Marsh - 6d6 × 10 feet
Mountains - 4d10 × 10 feet
Plains - 6d6 × 40 feet
Swamp - 2d8 × 10 feet
At the indicated distance, the PCs and the NPC/monster with the best Perception modifier make spot checks. The character with the highest result spots the other group first and can then imform his allies. Then they can chose to hide, run away, or meet the other group. Once the groups come into half the distance indicated by the roll, they automatically spot each other, unless one group is using Stealth.
While it's generally bad form to put the players in situations where their characters will surely die, the encounter tables should cover a wide range of CRs for monsters and humanoids. Hiding when seeing them in the distance or trying to run away should certainly be an option. Imagine having a group of 2nd level characters encounter two wyverns. If they fight, they will almost surely die. So they would probably want to find a cave or at least reach a thick forest where the wyverns can't get at them. But maybe the wyverns aren't particularly hungry and instead circle above the group just out of arrows reach, enjoying the view of seeing them trying to run to a save place in panic.
It has to be encounters, not neccessarily fights.
When the PCs encounter a guard post or a farm, they might ask to stay for the night, sleeping in the barn or buying some food. And maybe during the night, someone tries to steal from their belongings, or the guards have heard of the bounty on the PCs heads and want to trick them into feeling save to capture them later in the night. Some improvisation should always be used. It should never be "there are 3 ogers, fight them" or "there's an abandoned farm, there is nothing of interest to be found inside". The encounter tables should be a help to give the GM an idea quickly from which you instantly improvise something interesting.
Create water and create food and water are indeed problems and I would simply declare that they are not available in the campaign. In a similar way, teleport allows the pary to skip major parts of the journey, so the campaign either has to stay below 9th level (E6, E8) or that spell needs to be unavailable as well.
An 'escaped slaves' concept can work quite well - fleeing captivity in just their underpants tends to put a bit of a limit on all classes for a while. Everyone gets hosed at the start, and the little edges they collect on the way through start to hold real (sentimental) value.
Of course there are a breed of players who just can't handle playing 'stripped' so check that first.
I disagree that Teleport is a game breaker. If the whole point of the game is wilderness exploration and the players have come along for 8 levels of the journey so far, I don't see how teleporting ends/breaks it.
Sure, they can move anywhere in a second. But they have to move somewhere fairly known. This might just mean that they skip encounter areas they've already seen to get to the good stuff, or it might mean that when they're near death they run away better. Isn't that what the game's all about? Avoiding death better at every level?
But I applaud random encounter tables. We should have more of them in our games. You might hit wyverns at level 1, but how much fun would it be to happen upon a small goblin warband (CR 3) at level 5? Its really the whole reason why the dwarf fighter took great cleave isn't it?
This is all really good advice. Will Have to check out P6.
For me the problems with higher level are not too much of the problem. The first part which I am right now working on really will focus on survival. Yet it will be about level 1-4 maybe up to 5. After that I will move into a more grand adventure featuring more classic fantasy elements (Though I am adding a fair amount of sci-fi to the mix.
Making survival encounters is a great idea. In fact it gives me the clear idea that I should time-line day by day goals for the party, leaving enough flexibility in not to choke my players' choices.
The way I am going for the hook is that the party is actually a scouting party for an expeditionary force sent to a long forgotten civilization. This lets me limit their supplies as well as get rid of the goodie bag approach to gearing up first level characters. Each character would get standard gear, with slight variations to fit their character. They will get cut off from the rest of the force early on and as such supplies.
I am also planning that the survival theme of the first part will be underlined with fleeing from a much more powerful opponents who are actively hunting the party. Though they will be more overt about their tactics so I do not run into bad perception checks ruining my story entirely.
The whole campaign though I want to focus more on skills then combat. While Pathfinder really is designed around combat, I think that too many games resolve so fully around it. I hope to find a better balance between the two.
Instead of the highest level being 20 the highest level is 6 or 8 respectively is the base premise. I'm not sure if there's anything more than that.
The underlying thing you want to emphasize in your campaign is goals. In a typical high-fantasy campaign (I'm currently running one) the PCs have civilization at hand, can go off on adventures, and generally kick back w/some downtime so they can work on themselves. Their goals then are either esoteric ("I want to start a guild") or center on their own advancement ("I want enough loot to buy myself a decent magic axe")
In a survival type campaign, your players should have firm goals: building a wall for their camp, making fire, fashioning a stretcher. They should also always be working, doing, making or watching. Constant checks for either dangers or resources will be their norm.
To piggy-back on this, you need to make sure you have player buy-in. Because if they're expecting a regular D&D game, they're going to be very frustrated, since by normal game standards they won't actually be accomplishing anything. You need to make sure that they understand that survival itself is the goal, and you need to make sure they're okay with that kind of game. If you just spring this on them when they're expecting a regular D&D game, expect them to have relatively low investment in the game.
Since you're planning on having it go into grand adventure style later on, I'd put some hints of that early on. Make it clear that they're not just trying to stay alive, they're surviving in order to reach that later goal. Toss them a few breadcrumbs along the way, like minor enemies or effects of whatever nonsense they're supposed to stop later on. Not every session, but often enough for them to know that there is more coming later on.
What is E6? or P6? please?Research E6.
This will keep the toughness of environment alive.
It's basically a version of the game where you stop gaining levels at 6, and only get more feats as they gain experience. It's good for keeping things at the gritty level.